


told him it was cats

by watfordbird33



Series: codependent, disinclined [1]
Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: M/M, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 08:04:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11824515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: Baz flicks his wand and puts out the light.Snow laughs a little, softly, and then goes quiet. They’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, and their knees are touching. The world is just traffic and river-noise and the mouthbreathing of Simon Snow.After a long moment, Baz feels Simon’s hand, fumbling for his.“Gifts? Sex? Kisses? What’s left?”“Romance,” Baz says, and his voice sounds strange and choked.





	told him it was cats

**Author's Note:**

> I should really be working on updating my languishing Rogue One fic, but this called to me earlier today and I couldn't help myself. Unedited, unreviewed, spur-of-the-moment. Be warned.

“Baz, it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow.”

“You think I give a shit?” Baz says, kindly enough, from the table where he’s sprawled his coursework out. 

Snow comes into the kitchen, pours himself another cup of tea, and seats himself across from Baz. There’s a long silence which means he’s staring at Baz and waiting for him to look up.

“It’s  _ romantic,”  _ Snow says, finally. 

Baz has won the unspoken contest. Baz  _ always  _ wins the unspoken contests.

“Let me state this again for you, clearer. I. Don’t. Give. A. Shit.”

“But...we should at least exchange gifts. And kisses. And possibly sex.”

Baz almost chokes on the tea he’s just raised to his lips.  _ “Snow.” _

“Are you against the idea of romance, Baz?”

“I’m not having this talk with you. There will be no gifts. No kisses. No sex. And definitely no romance.”

Snow pouts and flares his wings. He’s lovely and petulant and flushed, and Baz is half-tempted to reach across the table and take him by the back of the neck. But the pout is a strategic move on Snow’s part. Designed to target Baz’s restraints with uncanny and wicked precision.

“Go away, now,” Baz says. “I’m working.”

“On what? Being a massive prat?”

“Aleister  _ Crowley,  _ Snow; what part of  _ go away  _ do you not understand?”

 

Snow does not give up. This is to be expected.

What’s not expected is his enlistment of Bunce, the moment she comes in the door. She’s carrying piles of takeaway, possibly curry, and in the enthusiastic hug Snow bestows upon her Snow’s wings nearly knock the whole stack down.

“Simon…?”

“Penny-don’t-you-think-Baz-is-an-ass-and-should-participate-in-Valentine’s-Day-with-me?”

Bunce, still looking bemused, untangles herself from Simon, raises her head, and stares at Baz. He’s standing at the doorway to the kitchen and feeling rather as if he should run.

An expression of dawning comprehension flits its way across Bunce’s face.

“Actually, yes, I do,” she says, with lingering glee. “To all of the above.”

“Fuck you,” Baz tells her, and she laughs as he stalks away.

 

And again, when they’re eating half-cold curry in the kitchen, propped against counters and cabinets because Baz’s coursework took over the table.

“Micah’s Skyping me at midnight, tonight, for Valentine’s Day,” Bunce informs Baz, through a mouthful of curry. “So I don’t want to hear any monkey business through the wall, understood?”

“Midnight?” Snow says. 

“He’s busy all day tomorrow; he’s got a deadline coming up. He says he just wants to, you know, say I love you for the fourteenth.”

Baz grunts. He’s met Micah and labeled him within a minute or two as an unassuming and blandly appetizing sort. In spite of himself, he feels guilty that even Micah’s unassuming and blandly appetizing Valentine’s Day sentiments will outshine his own.

“That’s  _ lovely,”  _ Snow coos, with a long look at Baz. “Beautiful and romantic, don’t you think, Baz?”

“Perfectly nauseating,” Baz says. He takes another bite of curry and smirks at Snow until his hopeful smile sags.

 

“You’re staying?” Bunce asks, when she finds him in the bathroom, squeezing toothpaste onto his finger. It’s always a bit of a hassle, cleaning his fangs this way; he’s sliced his fingertips open more than once.

“I need a toothbrush here,” he says, instead of a response.

“You don’t need anything more here without paying rent. Are you staying?”

Baz sighs.

“Simon thinks you’re not.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re so against Valentine’s Day. He says you said no kisses and no sex.”

Baz rubbed his brow with his toothpaste-free hand. “Why the fuck does he tell you this stuff?”

“I’m his best friend,” Bunce says, with this smug little shoulder-shimmy that makes Baz, briefly, want to vomit. “Seriously, though, what have you got against Valentine’s Day? It’s just a holiday. Grab him a bear or something from the drugstore and bring him breakfast in bed.”

Baz finishes his back molars, lowers his spit-covered finger, and tries to articulate through the froth of toothpaste in his mouth. “That’s not us, Bunce. You of all people should know that.”

She folds her arms over her wide bosom and stares him down.

“You know. Stupid things. Like bears and breakfast in bed. It would destroy my reputation. It would make  _ us _ something else. Not Simon and Baz.”

Bunce’s brow furrows.

“You know I--I love him,” Baz concedes. The words are uncomfortable. It’s not something he enjoys saying out loud. “More than anything else in the world.”

“That’s so cute,” Bunce says-- _ squeals.  _ “I didn’t know that. How would I know that? You never show it.”

“I know. That’s the point.” He sighs and starts on his front teeth. “Ah wan him do tink Ah m stull  _ Baah. _ ”

“You want him to think you’re still Baz? Why wouldn’t you be Baz?”

He spits, rinses, washes his hands. “If I’m sloppy and ridiculous and disgusting, that’s not Baz. Simon wouldn’t like that. Neither would I. He thinks he does, but if that’s what he wanted, he wouldn’t be with me.  _ This  _ Baz”--he indicates himself--“is the one we like, and compromise on. Does that make sense?”

Bunce’s eyes soften. 

“Oh, shit,” he says dryly, shelving the toothpaste. “You’ve just come to some grand and irreparably wrong conclusion, haven’t you?”

“You’re afraid of losing your masculinity, Basilton,” she informs him. “The toxic culture of soft gay men has finally caught up to you.”

Baz slams the cabinet shut and leaves. As he slips into Snow’s room, he starts laughing a little, wheezy and disbelieving. He can’t help it. Everything about that conversation was just so off-the-mark and  _ Bunce. _

 

At around midnight, when the Skype tones sound next door, Simon rolls over and throws his arm over Baz’s chest.

_ “Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaz.” _

Baz turns over to hide his erection.

“Sex?”

“No, Simon.”

Baz can feel Snow’s smile singeing his shoulder. “You called me Simon,” he says, endearingly delighted, and pushes himself even closer against Baz’s side. 

“No, Snow.”

“But--”

“No.”

There’s a long pause and then Simon’s other hand creeps around Baz and he palms his chest, firmly.

_ “Snow.” _

Snow pulls away. “Sorry, sorry.”

“You’re not sorry.”

“Baz, it’s Valentine’s Day.”

“No different from every other day.”

“Baz, kiss me.”

“No.”

So Simon kisses him, instead: the base of his neck, very soft. His hands come back around and he gives Baz’s stomach a long, slow rub, neck to navel and back again.

Baz sucks in a breath that he tries to hide.

“Are you sure?” Simon breathes.

“Positive.”

“Okay...”

Simon removes his hands and rolls back over. Baz’s chest and side go very cold. He lasts about five minutes in the silence, and then he sits up, bends over Snow, and kisses him so hard he sees fucking stars.

 

“Kisses, check,” Simon says cheerfully. He’s a morning person, and it’s offensive. “Sex, check. Now all we need are presents and romance.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” Bunce calls from the hallway. She comes in just as irritatingly smiley as Snow. “How are you two lovebirds on this fine sunny morning?”

“Kill me,” Baz says. He slams back the remains of his coffee like it’s alcohol. He wishes it was.

“It turns out I didn’t have the heart to come in and shut you two up,” Bunce announcs, pushing a stack of coursework to the side and settling herself at the head of the table. She’s carrying her ultra-thermos by one finger. “You were enjoying yourselves too much.”

“Voyeur,” Snow says, without much accusation.

“Micah asked. I told him it was cats.”

“We know better positions than cats,” Baz says, and leaves the kitchen when Bunce starts retching into her cup of tea.

 

He thinks about it, ragingly guilty, all through the lectures and classes of the day. Perhaps he should just get Snow some shitty bear from the drugstore, or buy scones cheap at the bakery. It’s almost a given that Snow will get him something just as absurd.

But  _ no,  _ he decides, if he’s going to do a gift at all--Merlin and Morgana, this fucking holiday--he might as well make it his own. 

 

Snow’s waiting for him outside the economics building at the end of the day. He’s carrying a glass of water with an exhausted daisy dropping petals off the side.

“A perfect representation of your soul,” Snow says, with deadpan sweetness, and hands Baz the water glass.

Baz takes the daisy out and puts it behind his ear. Then he kisses Snow for far too long to be respectable in this public place. The daisy falls out of his hair and gets trampled somewhere underneath.

“I have more,” Snow says, and takes Baz’s hand. Baz tries to shake him off, but Snow won’t let him. “Follow me.”

 

They go to the library and Snow logs on to one of the desktops and produces a pair of earbuds for Baz. Together they watch  _ In A Heartbeat,  _ which is this absurd and adorable short Normal movie which makes Baz want to cry. He’d die before he admitted it. Instead, he takes his earbuds out and surveys Snow coldly.

“I’m the suave brunette, obviously,” Snow says. “And you’re the idiot blonde who falls out of the tree.”

Baz shoves him and Snow gets his arm around Baz’s neck somewhere in the middle of the shove, so they’re intertwined the same way they were the night Snow drained the Pitch estate. It’s so familiar it feels like Baz has been here his whole life. Wrapped up in Simon Snow’s stupid mole-freckled arms. 

Dinner is last, and conducted at a cafe which Baz hates and Snow knows he hates. The owner has decorated it in pink and white for Valentine’s Day, and Frank Sinatra croons from a hidden speaker.

Baz orders the most expensive thing on the menu, just to be petty. It’s only twelve dollars.

“My darling Bazflower,” Snow breathes from across the table, leaning in. “You are the one who completes me.”

He takes Baz’s hand and kisses it, showily.

“Fuck the fuck off,” Baz tells him.

“The stars to my sky.”

Someone has started recording them. Baz can see the red light out of the corner of his eye.

“You are my everything. My darling.”

And then he does this lunge across the tabletop and sends the waters flying and ends up somehow in Baz’s arms, kissing him with passion and with tongue. The occupants of the cafe go wild. Baz can feel Snow shaking with ridiculous laughter against his chest.

It’s kind of perfect, to be honest. Baz wishes he had prepared something of this caliber. He hates to lose.

 

When they’ve left the cafe and Baz has given Snow a few well-deserved swear words and cuffs on the head, they wander down by the river and sit on the very edge of the bank. Baz casts a  **Let there be light,** which sends an entangled couple fleeing.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Snow says.

“Like it’s been happy, you wanker.”

“I can see you smiling, you know.”

Baz flicks his wand and puts out the light. 

Snow laughs a little, softly, and then goes quiet. They’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, and their knees are touching. The world is just traffic and river-noise and the mouthbreathing of Simon Snow. 

After a long moment, Baz feels Simon’s hand, fumbling for his.

“Gifts? Sex? Kisses? What’s left?”

“Romance,” Baz says, and his voice sounds strange and choked.

They finally figure out where their hands are supposed to be--it’s hard, in the dark--and Baz squeezes Snow’s. Snow’s hand is little-boy smooth, and his fingers are long and slender.

“Did you like your gifts?”

“Hated every one of them, Snow.”

There’s an undue amount of satisfaction in Snow’s voice when he replies, “I knew you would.”

And he turns and Baz feels him, stubbly jaw and the curve of his lips, and they line their mouths up very softly in the dark and kiss and kiss until they’re breathing each other’s air instead of their own.

“I didn’t get you anything,” Baz whispers.

Snow shrugs against him. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“What would you have wanted?”

“Didn’t want anything. Would have spoiled the Baz I know.”

Baz sighs relief. His instincts were right. They usually are.

“Liked the sex, though,” Snow says, drowsily. “And the kisses. All of them. ‘N I like this.” He tightens his fingers around Baz’s.

“I like  _ you,” _ Baz says. It’s a little hesitant and awkward, saying this, but he does, and feels better afterward because of it. “I. Actually. I think I love you. Simon.”

“There you go,” Simon says, with this infinite, delighted gentleness--and kisses Baz again, on the upturn of his jaw, the column of his neck. “Got me something after all.”


End file.
